Gaine's thick, dark brows shoot up, and he whistles under his breath, looking between me and Mireya like he isn't sure if he's going to have to break up a fight or not. I watch the beautiful biker chick, the one I both envy and hate, as she sets her drink down, turns fully to face me and smiles.
“Did you like watching him fuck me, Amy? Did you like to see him inside of another woman? Tell me, how did that make you feel?”
“I didn't do anything wrong, Mireya,” I tell her, trying to keep my cool. “When he first met me, he asked me out for drinks and never said he was involved with anyone. If you'll beg my pardon for saying so, he doesn't share a room with you, he shares one with me. He carries me around on his bike and he holds me at night while I sleep. Now, I know I've only been here a few days, but do you think even one of those activities might come across as Austin being interested in me?”
Mireya sneers and her hand flies out, smacking the beer bottle and sending it spinning across the table and onto the floor where it shatters into a million pieces.
“Yeah, I sent that video, you little bitch. And if I had the chance to do it over, I wouldn't do it. You want to know why? Because Austin told me he was forced to take you after your family had abandoned you. How do you think that makes me feel, hmm? My boyfriend of ten years leaves me for you because he feels sorry for you.”
My whole body goes cold, and I stumble back into a decorative column. Her words feel like a baseball bat, pummeling me from all sides, making me weak and bruised, but I refuse to collapse. I can't give her the satisfaction of that. Besides, as much as her words hurt, I know they aren't true. Austin isn't a man that can be forced into anything. He asked me here because he saw something in me; I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He might not even know it's there yet, but it is. He's interested.
“Mireya, come on,” Gaine says, standing up and stepping between us. “You and Austin were never an item as far as he ever knew. I know you love him, baby, but you've got to let him go. He – ”
“Shut the fuck up, Gaine!” Mireya screams, standing up and shoving him violently in the chest. Gaine stumbles back a few steps, but I think the movement is more out of shock than anything else. “If I wanted your opinion, I would ask for it.” She turns to face me and takes a step forward, black eyes glittering dangerously. I notice she wears a lot of rings on her fingers, and I doubt that most of them are there for decoration.
“Just remember every time he slips inside of you, that he was inside of me first. When you're calling his name, remember that I called it out first. And remember when he tells you he loves you, he. told. me. first.” Mireya leans in so close that I can smell her perfume and see a tiny star tattoo at the edge of one of her eyes. “Enjoy the used goods, bitch.”
I don't think in that moment. How can I? My mind is racing and my heart is breaking. Animal instincts rise up from out of nowhere and tell me to protect my mate. Later, I suppose I might find this a bit embarrassing, but in the heat of that argument, I just feel pissed off.
My hand flies out of its own accord and cracks Mireya hard across the cheek, turning her face away from me with the motion. I blink once and she's on me, hitting me back, grabbing my hair and pulling me forward. My purse flies off my shoulder as I stumble.
Pain ricochets through my skull as Mireya slams my face into the side of one of the booths, knocking me back into Gaine's arms. I don't stay there long, using his body as a springboard to lunge forward and hit Mireya in the stomach, carrying us both to the ground where we roll around in a tangle of leather and hair and nails. We're both shouting at one another, but I can't hear what she's saying because my heart is pounding too loud in my head. You stupid bitch. It's your fault that Christy hates me, that my family thinks I'm a whore. One thing I know that I say out loud is this: “Austin is mine.”
Our fight draws a big crowd of Triple M'ers that surround us and hold Gaine back, watching the catfight with interest. When I see them surrounding us, I feel a bit silly. This isn't how things are supposed to work, I realize as I take a step back and wipe blood away from my nose. Two women fighting over a man? One of the reasons that I wanted to leave my hometown was that I was tired of living in the dark ages, and yet, I'm making the biggest mistake of all. I should be confronting Austin, not Mireya. We both should. This isn't about us; it's about him. I hold my eyes up to block Mireya's next hit, intending to get out of this, when I hear her next words.
“I bet your nasty, little preacher daddy whacked off to that video in his confessional. I bet every damn man in your whole shitty church did. Don't have much else to do in the middle of hick country, am I right?”
My arms fly out and wrap around Mireya's ebony waves, pulling her towards me and refusing to weaken, not even when she punches me in the face with her rings. Blood sprays out of my nose like a fountain. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen, splattering Mireya's bronze cheeks with red as I choke and cough against the rush of fluids in my throat. Oh, God, I hope it isn't broken. I slam my forehead against her face, wincing at the pain but grateful when she lets go of me and we separate, so I can catch my breath.
Both of us are breathing hard and there's an exorbitant amount of blood (mostly mine) sprinkling our faces and shirts.
“You don't have anything to say to me before I kick your ass?” Mireya asks, scooping her long hair back and putting it into a quick ponytail. Her mistake. As soon as she lifts her hands up, I charge her and hit her so hard that she falls back and crashes against the marble floor with a grunt. My fist pulls back and hits her in the jaw once, twice, three times before she grabs my earrings and tears them from my lobes, making me scream. My nails come out and rake down her face and arms and chest, drawing long, angry welts as she reaches out and punches me again, dislodging me from my position and throwing me to the floor.
Her boot comes out of nowhere and makes contact with my stomach. I gag and blood comes up, staining the lobby carpet. Still, nobody moves in to help, not even the employees.
“You like that, bitch?” Mireya asks, kicking me again, even harder this time. I reach out and grab her ankle, pulling with all my strength and knocking Sawyer to her knees hard. I roll over and kick out sharply, hitting her in the belly. It doesn't feel as good as I thought it would. Instead, when my toe sinks into her soft belly, I feel sick.
I struggle to sit up, watching her warily out of the corner of my eye and nearly pass out when a sandy head appears behind the crowd and the people part, revealing Austin Sparks to the two of us. He stands there for a very, very long time looking from her to me and back again. His brown eyes take in the blood and the broken earrings with no emotion whatsoever; he's completely and utterly neutral. After one of the world's most awkward silences, Austin steps over to me and bends down, sliding his arms under my body and lifting me from the floor in a dizzying rush. Already, I can hear Mireya sobbing. Still, Austin says nothing to her, taking me through the crowd of bikers, past the baffled hotel employees and up the stairs.
He carries me the whole way there and sets me in our bed before disappearing into the bathroom and turning on the shower. When he comes back into the room, he's naked and he's holding out a hand for me.
“Come on, Cross,” he says, taking me by the wrist and pulling me to my feet. Austin then proceeds to strip me down until I'm standing completely buck naked in front of him, bruised and bleeding and shameful. I lower my chin and look away from his face, down at the floor by our feet.
“Austin, I … that was despicable of me.” I jump when I hear him laugh, turning my face back quickly and slapping my hair across his bare chest. When he looks down at me, he's smiling.
“Shit,” he says, reaching up with a thumb and gently touching it to my swollen lower lip. “If I wasn't so damn worried about you, I'd be having a hoot and a holler right about now.” I blink at him and try to pretend I don't see his cock rising slowly to meet me.
“Really? You're not mad?”
“Mad?” he asks, crinkling his sandy brow
s up. “Why in the hell would I be mad? Don't you know, every man likes a good catfight.” I narrow my eyes when his face drops for a second. He's hiding something from me. “And hey, if you had any worries about being accepted by the group, you can forget about 'em now. I bet you'll have half of 'em trying to get into your pants tomorrow. A little tussle every once in awhile is good, builds character and respect.”
“But?” I say, wondering about the strange, silent way he came in and picked me up, leaving his friend on the floor with a shimmer of angry tears in her eyes. “Why did you grab me like that?”
It's Austin's turn to look away as he pulls me into the bathroom and pretends to be extremely interested in the temperature of the water. I cross my arms over my breasts and tell myself that I have no problem being naked in front of him, none whatsoever, that I am completely okay with this.
And then his brown eyes flicker back over to me and glide up and down my body, leaving a trail of goose bumps in their wake. I continuously avoid looking at the area of his crotch.
“I had to make a point,” he says with a sigh. He smiles sadly. “That I wasn't into Mireya in a romantic way.”
I stare at him and my pulse starts to speed up the way it always seems to when he's around, pumping blood to my nipples and the area between my thighs, heating me up for the moment when Austin's skin makes contact with my own.
“But why pick me up? What does that mean?”
Austin doesn't answer me.
“Austin?”
“Hey,” he says, moving across the white tiles of the floor and holding his hands out like he wants to touch my arms. “Take it easy on Mireya, okay? She hasn't had the easiest time of it, you know?”
“But wh-” Austin cuts me off mid-word with a kiss that could melt mountains and burn skies, taking my arms in a bruising grip and pulling me hard against his chest, smashing my breasts against his taut flesh. A cry gets caught in my throat, pushed back by Austin's tongue, by his roving lips that don't seem to mind the blood on my skin, tasting me for all I'm worth. Only when he wraps his arms around me do I really feel the bruises that Mireya left and cringe.
Austin relaxes his arms and pulls his mouth back, just enough so that our lips our touching but only barely. And then he starts to move, sliding down slowly while encouraging me to take a few, careful steps back so that I'm leaning against the wall.
His hot breath touches my chin first and then singes its way down my neck, burning me with each press of his mouth against skin, each graze of his teeth. When he finds my breasts, he pays special attention to them, licking them first and then blowing gently across the skin to wake it up, leaving me a shivering, drooping mess.
“Austin,” I whisper, watching as the hot steam in the air moves along with my breath, floating away like a cloud in the sky.
“Shush, sugar, and just enjoy yourself.”
He drops to his knees and pushes my legs apart with his hands, dipping his head between my thighs and flicking his tongue across my sweet spot.
Pleasure incinerates me from the inside out, turning me into a melting puddle that wobbles and collapses back against the wall, so that I'm nearly in a seated position, held up solely by Austin's hands on my ass. My hand immediately grabs a handful of his soft, blonde hair and tangles in it, tugging it towards my bruised belly as he slides his warm, wet mouth down the gentle curl of hair and dips his tongue inside of me.
“I … I can't stand up,” I say, but Austin doesn't let me use that as an excuse, continuing his journey by pressing his face fully against me and nibbling lightly with his teeth, teasing my clit into an almost painful state that makes me realize how right all those girls in my books were: oral sex is a-ma-zing. He heckles my poor pussy until my eyes flutter shut and my head rolls to the side, consumed by the sensation of touch and the smell of his sweaty body in the enclosed space of the bathroom. Just when I start to feel that tickle at the base of my spine, the one that promises that la petite mort is not far off, he stops and has the audacity to chuckle against my most sensitive bits, sending a warm vibration through my core.
I perk up suddenly and press my hands against the wall to steady myself.
“How rude,” I whisper to him, watching as he rises up in front of me, moist with the steam from the shower, tattoos bright under the shimmer of water. He looks like he's been oiled up for a magazine shoot or something. Every muscle is standing to attention, straining against his skin and swearing to me that yes, he is as tough as he looks.
I reach out and flick my fingernails against a tattoo that I hadn't noticed before but can't believe that I ever missed. Three M's sit along his hip bone with one larger one in the center and two smaller ones on either side. It's done up in red and black ink and is quite striking against the tanned golden color of his skin.
“What does it stand for?” I ask as he shudders at my touch.
Austins points to the tattoo and smiles.
“Motorcycles, madness, money,” he says, but doesn't explain any further and instead decides to kiss me with the taste of my own body tainting his lips, pausing just long enough to drag me into the shower and pin me up against the tiles before he's back at it again.
I let my hands trail up his arms, savoring the firm, rounded muscles and the full sleeves of tattoos that I've always admired but never had the time to quite appreciate. Intricate webs of art tangle around one another and color Austin's skin with this tapestry, this story, carved from ink and skin like some sort of fresco. I stare at them for as long as I can, until the water soaks my hair and tugs the soggy strands over my eyes, blending them with Austin's sandy locks until it's hard to see where one face ends and one begins.
When his knee comes up between my legs and spreads them, I open gently, sliding my arms up around his neck, so that I have something strong and sturdy to hold onto, something that's absolutely, one hundred percent worth digging my fingers into and keeping hold of.
When Austin angles his shaft up into me, sliding deep and holding himself there, pressed against me, I don't know that he knows we're making love. But I do. We don't have it yet, but it's the process that counts, the making that counts. I hear another bit of wisdom run through my head, but this time, it's not the words of a fictional character but someone I know very well, someone who I have finally decided I may actually miss – my mama.
Please don't say that it's strange to think of your mother when you're having sex with a man you might actually like because really, that's the best place for it. Mom's are supposed to guide us, to show us the way, to help us understand what we want, so we can find that secret, mysterious, thing, that one, golden egg in a sea of white: happiness.
So as Austin begins to move inside of me, I think that maybe, just maybe, I could have that. It's just a gut feeling, of course, and I could be entirely wrong; he could dump me here tomorrow and take off into the sunset, but I don't think so. I think my mother's words ring truer here than they ever have before.
When you start something, make sure that you're willing to take the time to finish it right because, honey, the work you put into it will be more than worth it in the end. The best things always are.
Whatever it is that Austin and I have together … this, this feeling I can't quite describe, I'm going to figure it out and going to damn well make sure I finish it. If it's love, then I'll make sure that it's right, that it's a bodice ripping, head spinning, stomach aching, twirling, tumbling, spinning cascade of life. And if it's not, well, then I always have Sali Bend's words of wisdom to fall back on.
Enjoy the ride because sometimes that's all you have. Sometimes, on the other side there's nothing but a trash can a whole bunch of people there to watch you throw up in it.
I hope that this time, Sali is wrong.
I don't know what it is that happens in that bathroom between Amy and me, but when we get out, all I want to do is hold her tight against me and breathe in the scent of her hair.
That shit has never happened to me before.
I can't say that I'm a disrespectful guy or that I'd go so far as to call myself a whore like Beck, but I've also never felt the urge to just lay there with a woman, touching her but not having sex with her. I'm twenty-eight years old, so it's not like I haven't had the opportunity. There have been plenty of nice girls like Amy and even more naughty ones like Mireya, but I didn't feel like this.
I'm a bit spooked, to be honest, and the whole damn thing sort of makes me want to run, but I don't.
I fucking can't.
I fucking cannot get up and leave this girl here alone, not after seeing her all banged up and covered in blood. I also have to tell her the truth about Mireya, so she understands. I want everything to be clear, so I'm going to be as honest as I can be about it. Sawyer's a good friend of mine, and I hope she'll always be. But you chose Amy. I don't delve into the symbolism behind what I did, how I pretty much laid it flat out for the group in the lobby: Amy is mine.
How else are they supposed to interpret that? I mean, Beck can joke about the 'Code of the Road' all he wants, but in some ways, it's true. There are a set of rules that are to be followed not because you signed somethin' or because somebody told ya to, but because that's the way they've always been and you know they're right. There's the obvious ones of course: don't kill, don't steal, don't disrespect. But then there's the little things, like not fucking with other folk's bikes. And of course, stating your intent. Intent is friggin' everything out here, and I've just made mine loud and clear.
My heart starts to pump, and I wonder if Amy can feel it, if she knows that I like her more than the average girl. I don't know, but I promise myself that I'm not going to say a damn thing. Besides, I could be wrong. This could pass like I thought it would. Maybe after a few more rounds in the bedroom, Amy will lose her appeal and she can blend into the rest of Triple M, just another friendly face with no romantic attachment. Bullshit.
I sigh and my breath ruffles Amy's hair.
“Austin?” she asks me. “Are you awake?”
Losing Me, Finding You Page 19